According to Rapture Ready, here are the top ten current prophetic issues (Click here: Top Ten):

Iran's nuclear program

Putin's grab for power in Russia

The supply of oil

Subprime loan crisis

The declining value of the dollar

China's growing economic and military might

Global terrorism

Nation ID initiatives

Global weather changes

Tension between Israel and Syria

Boy, do I miss the good ole days when the Soviet-Arab confederacy was about to invade Israel, and when everyone was worried that the EU would soon add the tenth and final nation reconstituting the Holy Roman Empire.

Reader Comments (25)

I wonder what the reversal of these things would mean, that Jesus is further away from coming back? Why are the pointers always pre-dominantly negative to vague? Why are they always so ethno-centric? Why is the list always so small when there is a lot more than these things going on in the world, globally and locally?

Anyway, I hear Paul Schaffer and The World's Most Dangerous band cuing...

I have my Arizona Republic in one hand and my King Jimmy in the other hand. I also have my latest Dave Hunt and Chuck Mistler C.D.'s cranked up real loud, so that I can find the appropriate Scriptures to fit this latest top ten list!

As I recall, the classic dispensationalists ala Chafer took umbrage with the revised dispensationalism of folks like Hal Lindsey and Chuck Smith who saw 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel as prophetically significant. Classic dispensationalism taught that the pre-trib rapture was the one and only sign of the end. IOW, the prophetic clock had stopped ticking and would not start again until the imminent rapture, and no one would have any clue that was to happen until it happened. Guys like John Walvoord got caught in the middle, and even he turned to the dark side with books like "Armageddon Oil and the Middle East Crisis".

I think since the establishment of the nation of Israel, pretrib teachers just for example Walvoord have contradicted themselves when they have stated that certain political events have had to happen before the rapture. The very definitional article of pretribulationism (which sadly I have heard some amills assert as well) is that no prophesied events _must_ occur before Christ's coming (i.e the unbiblical notion that Christ can come back at any moment)

"There are many events that must occur before Christ's Return including the full number of God's elect."

Alan,

True, but most of those events are imperceptible wrt the Second Coming. I might even argue that the loosing of Satan just prior to Christ’s return in Rev. 20:7,8 is not necessarily something that we will be able to perceive with our senses. It is a spiritual battle that is taking place for the heart and soul of the nations. We could very well be in it right now and not recognize the situation. Or it could be thousands of years from now.

Think of it this way: Could Christ come back before your salvation? Or mine? No, since election is a decree (an event that must unfold); therefore, imminency cannot be true.

Birth is a perceptible event, right? And since salvation follows after birth, Christ could not have come before your birth.

Interestingly, it does not matter what view you take on election -- Arminian or Calvinist -- it still is airtight. If someone takes a foreknowledge view of election, that event must still occur before Christ's Return.

"Birth is a perceptible event, right? And since salvation follows after birth, Christ could not have come before your birth."

Alan,

You're not suggesting you can look into a person's soul and know who is elect and who is not, are you?

Humanly speaking, the total number of the elect is certainly an unknown and unknowable. Knowing that the total number of elect is set from the foundation of the world does not help us with the timing (humanly speaking) of Christ’s return.

"Tom, not sure if you are understanding me :-) I am saying that Scripture prophecies that the elect must be brought in the fold before Christ's Return. This very fact undermines imminency."

Alan,

I must be misunderstanding something. Unless you know the number of the elect and can build some giant countdown clock, I cannot see how the mere fact that there is a definite number undermines the notion of imminence. The number must be met at some point in time, and then certainly Christ’s return is imminent. But you can never know where you are on the timeline, so if you were only using this one criteria, Christ’s return is imminent, humanly speaking.

Of course, his return is imminent when the full number of the elect are brought in. That is not the issue. The consistent definition by pretrib writers is this: "No prophesied events since Pentecost _must_ occur before Christ's Return." And if the Bible states an event that must occur before his Return, then imminency is invalid.

The Pretribulationists will say that Christ could have come back in 1900 or 1950, etc. But that is not possible since God's elect is brought to salvation.

Besides, I believe that Christ has given us definite signs of his Coming in Matthew 24. The election argument undermines the traditional definition of imminency by pretribs. A pretrib can equivocate on its meaning, but the traditional pretrib meaning has never been a matter of dispute.

Christ could not have come back before an elect individual is brought to salvation. This fact undercuts the Holy Grail of pretribulationism.

Of course there are dispies in Africa. They are thaught that way by dispie missionaries and by cheap schools of indoctrination by mail (alleged seminaries, find freelandia and cry). It can be a sad state of affairs. Health, wealth and prosperity is popular too. Basically we export all our trash and some eat it up. Yes, there are some decent dispensationalists, but many of the bad ones have active mailings everywhere.

Doesn't it seem odd that some can make fun of a good translation as the "King Jimmy"? I do not use the King James Version in my daily devotions normally but I have a problem with the making fun of other translations.

Even though there are nuts on the KJVO side, and they often deserve criticism, I believe there should be enough respect for the Word not to criticize a good version.

I have been quite interested for some time in the fact that the end times nuts don't make a big deal about global warming. So number nine on the top ten list here was good to see. Could it be that the prophecy goofs lean hard to the right, and global warming types lean hard to the left? How much of the thinking is about politics?

"The Bible prophecies that by necessity the event of the salvation of God's elect will take place before his Return."

Alan,

I believe there is a flaw in your syllogism that renders it invalid. I.e., is there any specific Bible prophecy that says the full number of elect could not have been reached by, say, AD400? Of course we know that to not be the case, but only from hindsight, not from revelation.

Your flaw is that you do not know the number but are only working from hindsight.